‘No one there’: PM’s cheeky dig at Project hosts after grilling on superannuation plans

Fresh off a grilling on his plans for the superannuation system, Anthony Albanese took a cheeky dig at the Project panel.

After joining thousands of revellers at the Mardi Gras parade in Sydney on Saturday night, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared on Sunday’s edition of The Project, where he faced a grilling from the show’s hosts.

However, he made sure to have the last laugh.

After talking about what it was like to attend the parade as a “daggy bloke from Marrickville”, attention turned to the topic of superannuation, which has been making headlines this week. It comes following Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ announcement that the government intends to define an objective of superannuation.

And the PM copped quite a grilling from host Hamish Macdonald.

“The Treasurer has been floating the idea of tightening tax breaks for those with more than $3 million in their super fund, why would you be talking about doing this when you promised before the election that you wouldn’t touch super?” he asked.

Macdonald then played back a clip of the PM saying last year: “We’ve said we have no intention of making any super changes, one of the things we’re doing in this campaign is we’re making all of our policies clear.”

Madconald then said: “That’s not just big changes not just major changes, you said there won’t be any changes.”

“I said we had no intention. That’s not the objective here. But people are coming forward with ideas. We’re not shutting down debate. It is appropriate there be debate about the policy future across a range of issues, particularly in the context of the trillion dollars in debt we inherited,” Mr Albanese said.

“But we have no intention of making changes in superannuation, we will have the debate about the purpose and the definition of what it is and try to enshrine that in legislation, so people get what the purpose is much clearer.

“We saw in the last campaign a major proposal to allow people to use super for housing and in the pandemic a lot of people reduce their superannuation balances down to zero, which will mean that they they do it tougher in retirement.”

He was grilled about the topic of superannuation. Picture: Channel 10

Anthony Albanese at the Mardi Gras. Picture: Channel 10

Macdonald then insisted that the debate was “being driven by your own ministers” and said Albanese wouldn’t be having these conversations if he weren’t thinking seriously about it.

“I wonder if it’s really a question of integrity for you, given you campaigned so hard on being integrous.”

Mr Albanese hit back, saying again there are no changes and it’s just a “hypothetical” discussion.

Then a graph was mentioned showing many people are affected by these possible changes, including one Australia who has half a billion dollars.

Co-host Michael Hing said: “Right at the top, you can see here, is one Australian who apparently has half a billion dollars in superannuation. Half a billion dollars in superannuation! Do you know who it is?”

There’s one lucky person with a lot of super. Picture: Channel 10

“No I don’t. Well I can guarantee it’s no one there on the desk,” he said giggling.

The hosts erupted in laughter as well, before finishing the segment.

Originally published as ‘No one there’: PM’s cheeky dig at Project hosts after grilling on superannuation plans